"There is no such thing as a baby...." When Donald Winnicott
said those words, what he meant was that there is instead a
mother/baby--an emotional, psychological, spiritual unit--where
knowing comes from intuition and where energy is exchanged. The
baby and the mother, although separated physiologically, are still
psychologically one. Needless to say, for the child separated
from his mother at birth or soon after, such an idea has tremendous
importance. But has anyone been paying attention to this?
If anyone had told me, when we brought home our three-day-old
daughter on Christmas Eve, 1969, that rearing an adopted child
would be different from rearing one's biological child, I, like
many new and enthusiastic adoptive parents, would have laughed
at them and said, "Of course it won't be different! What can a
tiny baby know? We will love her and give her a wonderful home."
My belief was that love would conquer all. What I was not prepared
for was that it was easier for us to give her love than it was
for her to accept it.
For love to be freely accepted there must be trust, and despite
the love and security our daughter has been given, she has suffered
the anxiety of wondering if she would again be rejected. For her
this anxiety manifested itself in typical testing-out behavior.
At the same time that she tried to provoke the very rejection
that she feared, there was a reaction on her part to reject before
she was rejected. It seemed that allowing herself to love and
be loved was too dangerous; she couldn't trust that she would
not again be abandoned.
I was to discover during the ten years of my research that hers
was one of two diametrically opposed responses to having been
abandoned; the other being a tendency toward acquiescence, compliance
and withdrawal. Although living with a testing-out child may be
more difficult than living with a compliant child, I am thankful
that she acted in such a way so as to bring her pain to our attention.
We were able, after years of trying to deal with it ourselves,
to get help for her. This was the beginning of a journey which
was to change all our lives.
I had no idea at the outset of her therapy that adoption had
anything to do with what was going on with my daughter. Despite
the fact that I had been considered a highly successful teacher
with a deep, caring and intuitive understanding of my students
(as well as the biological parent of a younger daughter who was
not having these difficulties), I believed that I must somehow
be at fault. What was I doing wrong? Why was my daugher acting
so hostile and angry toward me at home, yet close and loving when
in public? Why was she so strong-willed and dramatic? Why did
she feel the desperate need to be in complete control of every
situation? Why could she not accept the love I had and wanted
to give her? For most of the acting out was directed at me, her
mother. James Mehlfeld, a Bay Area therapist, put it this way,
"All the hoopla is the child trying to connect with the mother."
At the same time, this attempt at bonding was sabotaged by outrageous,
destructive behavior on her part as she tested and retested our
love and commitment.
Paul Brinich said that because the child is rejected by his
biological parents, it is not surprising that he repeatedly tests
the commitment of his adoptive parents. The problem is that in
so doing he does not relieve his anxiety. Instead, he increases
his demands for acceptance by engaging in behavior which is more
and more destructive and less and less acceptable until he brings
about the very outcome which he feared in the first place.
Because we were able to get the appropriate help for our daughter
(which is not easy to come by, because of denial in the professional
community of the importance of adoption as an issue), the outcome
for us as a family did not reach the tragic proportions it does
for many adoptive families; the rejection on the part of either
the parents for the acting-out child or on the part of the child
for the parents, with the child either prematurely leaving or
being kicked out of the home. We have been able to see our daughter
gradually emerge from an antisocial, provocative, distancing child
into an outgoing, sensitive, loving young woman.
The path has not been easy. When, after three years of therapy,
the preconscious feelings of separation from her mother began
to emerge into consciousness, she fought this happening as if
her very life depended on it; for allowing those feelings meant
also having to feel what she perceived as her vulnerable, "defective"
self, the reason for her mother's having given her up. If she
could keep those feelings at bay, her integrity could be preserved
and she could escape, for a while longer, annihilation. Her wound
was deep, her defenses strong, and her need for understanding
great.
As I sought answers to what was going on in the psyche of my
own daughter, my interest began to expand to other children and
their adoptive parents, many of whom seemed alienated from one
another. Subsequent conversations with my daughter's therapist,
Dr. Loren Pedersen, led to my research on adoption.
The ideas which will be presented here first came as an intuitive
understanding about what was going on for my daughter. For someone
who was adopted almost at birth, who was never in foster care
and who was truly wanted and loved by us, she seemed to be in
a great deal of pain. In order to seek the source of that pain
I turned to the literature, but found something lacking in all
the theories I encountered. The explanations seemed too simplistic
and external. Too much was being ignored, perhaps because there
were no real solutions, no absolutes or perhaps because it wasn't
easy to prove or even support with scientific data what was really
going on.
In any case, even though many of the ideas had validity, they
didn't completely fit what I was intuiting and observing in my
daughter. Was she an exception? I didn't think so. There was a
kind of universality or primal quality to her pain, which didn't
lend itself to simple, readily obtainable or easily acceptable
explanations. There was an "intangible something" which was missing
in the adoption literature except by implication. No one was spelling
it out. In my quest of that "intangible something" I had to go
beyond adoption itself into the realms of pre and perinatal psychology--the
nature of attachment and bonding and the trauma of separation,
abandonment and loss.
It has long been known that institutions and temporary or multiple
foster care cannot adequately care for abandoned children. The
lack of a permanent caregiver deprives the child of some of the
requisites for normal psychological development--a continuity
of relationship, emotional nurturing and stimulation. As the number
of caregivers increases, the ability to attach diminishes and
the numbing of affect becomes more and more evident. There is
often a failure to thrive and, in extreme cases, even death. What
the child needs, it seems, is a permanent caregiver and the sooner
the better.
Adoption, then, has been seen as the best solution to three
problems: a biological mother who cannot, will not or is discouraged
from taking care of her infant; the child who is then relinquished;
the infertile couple who want a child. The fantasy has been that
the joining together of the latter two entities would produce
a happy solution for everyone. The reality, however, has often
been less than ideal. Despite the continuity of relationship which
adoption provides, many adopted children experience themselves
as unwanted, are unable to trust the permanency of the adoptive
relationship and often demonstrate emotional disturbances and
behavioral problems.
The statistics are staggering. Although adoptees make up only
2 to 3 percent of the population, statistics consistently indicate
that 30 to 40 percent of those children found in special schools,
juvenile hall and residential treatment centers are adopted. Adopted
children have a higher incidence of juvenile delinquency, sexual
promiscuity and running away from home than their non-adopted
peers. They also have more difficulty in school, both academically
and socially. What is it which places these children at a higher
psychological risk than the general population?
In looking for the answer to this question, some clinicians
point the finger at the adoptive parents, who are often seen as
sexually repressed, feeling rejected by the child, having an unconscious
aversion toward parenthood, being over-protective and thus complicating
the individuation process for their child, being insecure about
the child's being really theirs, or being unable to reconcile
themselves to their infertility. Except for the last two, it is
acknowledged that these same factors are not restricted to families
with adopted children.
While it is true that any or several of these factors may be
present in an adoptive home, I agree with Sorosky, Baran and Pannor
that adopted children's unique vulnerability cannot be wholly
attributed to a dysfunction on the part of their adoptive parents.
And Donovan and McIntyre pointed out that their finding has been
a "striking consistency of behavior problems among adoptees whether
the family is functional or dysfunctional." What is it, then,
which causes this vulnerability?
T. Berry Brazelton cautioned us not to ignore the amazing forty
weeks in the womb by treating the neonate as if he had "sprung
full-blown from the head of Zeus," because by doing so we are
ignoring some important history, a history shared with his biological
mother. Why is it that so many adoptees are out there looking
for these mothers, whom they do not consciously remember? Is it
just medical history or genetic curiosity, and if so, why is it
specifically the mother for whom they search? (For, in my research
it was most often the mother whom adoptees wanted to find.) As
one woman told me, "Oh, he (the father) was just someone who loved
her. She was the one I was connected to."
I believe that this connection, established during the nine
months in utero, is a profound connection, and it is my hypothesis
that the severing of that connection between the child and biological
mother causes a primal or narcissistic wound which often manifests
in a sense of loss (depression), basic mistrust (anxiety), emotional
and/or behavioral problems and difficulties in relationships with
significant others. I further believe that the awareness, whether
conscious or unconscious, that the original separation was the
result of relinquishment affects the adoptee's sense of Self,
self-esteem and self-worth.
In the literature on childhood development, there appears to
be no distinction made between a child who comes into a family
by birth or one who has come by adoption. Yet all adopted children
begin their lives having already felt the pain and, perhaps, terror
of separation from the first mother. They experience the environment
as hostile and their bond to the mother as transitory. They may
also unconsciously experience themselves as having been somehow
lacking or unworthy of their birth parents' love and protection.
While adoptive parents may refer to the child as "chosen" and
to themselves as the "real" parents, the child has had an experience
of another mother to whom he was once attached and from whom he
is now separated which he can never completely ignore. The words
we use to describe that separation or the cognitive reasons we
give for it make no difference to the feeling sense of the child.
As one adoptee told me, "Being wanted by my adoptive parents didn't
compare to being unwanted by my birth mother." Whether we refer
to this separation as surrendering or relinquishment, the child
experiences it as abandonment.
Some psychiatrists believe that the early age at which infants
are placed for adoption precludes any major trauma resulting from
the separation from the biological parents. Simon and Senturia
have said, "The fantasy or reunion with the biologic parents appears
to be an effort to deal with the depression that grows out of
fantasies around abandonment." It should be noted that, although
we may call the fear of being abandoned by the adoptive parents
a fantasy, there is precedent for that fear in the original separation
experience, which may be felt only unconsciously. What the adoptee
is fearing isn't a fantasy, it is a memory trace which at any
time can be repeated. Stone pointed out that the question, whether
spoken or unspoken, "Why did my own mother not keep me?" is almost
always followed by the unexpressed but equally anxious thought,
"If she could do that, what about you?" Is it any wonder that
adoptees go through life feeling as if at any time the other shoe
could drop? To what extent does this fear of abandonment affect
their development?
John Bowlby ascribed the threat of abandonment as the greatest
fear a child can suffer, and stated that children who experience
repeated separations or threats of abandonment become angry and
dysfunctional. Harriet Machtiger noted that the fear of abandonment
is one of the most common fears of childhood and a dominant theme
in child myths. Because of their experience with abandonment,
is it possible that this threat is one which hangs over the heads
of all adoptees like the sword of Damocles all their lives, but
about which they might not be consciously aware?
I believe that it is, and that it is this threat which causes
the generalized anxiety so often found in adoptees. Anxiety is
different from fear. Goldstein said that fear sharpens the senses
and drives them into action, whereas anxiety paralyzes the senses
and renders them unusable. Anxiety's paralyzing of the senses
might be what many clinicians describe as "numbing", and what
some adoptees experience as an inability to get on with their
lives. Children who have been abandoned have an early awareness
that they need to be cautious, alert and watchful--a response
which is called hyper-vigilance. This gives them the means by
which to try to avoid another abandonment, but it does little
to foster the true Self of the individual. It instead creates
a false self, about which I will have more to say later.
In looking at ways in which to define and deal with adoption
issues, there are currently two popular modes of thought. One
is that adoptees' problems are seen as stemming from external
considerations. A change in adoption laws and procedures and the
unsealing of records are seen as ways to avoid the shame and insult
of secrecy. More open communication between children and adoptive
parents about all aspects of adoption has been recommended as
a means of helping children adjust.
Independent, open adoptions have been held out as the hope of
the future by eliminating the stigma of secrecy and lack of genealogical
history and by allowing the adoptee and birth mother to have some
kind of contact. As many of you know, this contact may be in the
form of letters, cards and pictures exchanged between birth and
adoptive families or may include actual visits with their children
by the biological relatives. Although this type of adoption is
recommended above the former process of secrecy which came before
it, in working with these families I know that there are many
problems inherent in this situation also.
Two problems are obvious: (1) In a situation where there is
more than one adopted child, one birth family has more contact
than the other or others. (2) If the birth family has children
who were not given up for adoption, this exacerbates the feeling
of being "not good enough to keep" on the part of the child who
was relinquished.
A relatively new suggestion has been that adoption per se be
eliminated altogether and that guardianships be established instead.
This would allow the child to keep his own name and heritage and
at the same time give him a permanent home. While I applaud the
attempt at honesty, which this idea provides, it seems to me to
be a type of long-term foster care, with the child having no real
sense of family at all. And none of these solutions addresses
on the feeling level the question, "Why am I living in this family
and not with you?"
Another trend in trying to understand and eliminate the problems
connected with adoption is to view them as conceptual. According
to this school of thought it all has to do with telling about
adoption, the idea of having two mothers, the reasons for having
been relinquished and the feelings this brings up for the child.
One gets the feeling, hearing these ideas, that adoption is only
a theory and that if we don't say too much about it, it won't
have much effect. The reason we have to tell is that the child
might find out anyway. And then, it is best to be honest. The
question shifts from "if" to "when" (although I understand that
"if" is rearing its ugly head again in some circles).
There have been and still are myriad debates about when a child
should be told of his adoption. Should he be told as soon as he
is able to understand the word? Before? During latency or after?
Will telling a child of his adoptive status during the very early
years prolong the resolution of issues pertaining to those stages
of development?
"Tell him as soon as possible so that he will not think that
it is a bad secret which has been kept from him but will see it
as a positive thing," some experts recommend. "Adoption is a complicated
concept which the child is not going to understand, so it is better
to wait until he is able to comprehend what he is being told,"
others argue. On and on it goes!
The problem with all of this rhetoric is that everyone is forgetting
something: the adoptee was there. The child actually experienced
being left alone by the biological mother and being handed over
to strangers. That he may have been only a few days or a few minutes
old makes no difference. He had a 40-week experience with a person
with whom he probably bonded in utero, a person to whom he is
biologically, genetically, historically and perhaps even more
importantly, psychologically, emotionally and spiritually connected.
And some people would like him to believe that it is the "telling"
of that experience of the severing of that bond that makes him
feel so bad!
Marshall Schechter cited statistics which indicated that 86.9
percent of adoptees show no immediate reaction to being told of
their adoption. Might it not be that this is a result of an unconscious
awareness of the fact of their adoption on the part of adoptees?
Sorosky, Baran and Pannor found this to be true, as did I in my
research. The adoptees who had found out as adolescents or adults
that they were adopted were not particularly surprised. One said
that she had had an intuitive feeling all along that she had been
adopted. Another noted that he had felt that he didn't fit in
with his family and that "something was wrong." Any reactions,
which have heretofore been attributed to the shock of finding
out that they were adopted, may instead be the shock and betrayal
of having been denied the truth all those years.
This kind of betrayal does little to foster trust between a
child and his parents and instead gives an air of unreality and
dishonesty to the whole relationship. As pointed out by Frances
Wickes in her book, The Inner World of Childhood, there
is a great deal of danger inherent in creating such an atmosphere
of deception and mistrust in the life of a child. Children are
primarily creatures of intuition and sensation. The world of objects
is explored through sensation while they become aware of inner
forces, both in themselves and others, through intuition.
In their new and excellent book, Healing the Hurt Child,
Donovan and McIntyre warn parents of trying to keep secrets from
their children. In an early chapter they say, "...we can usually
demonstrate easily to the parent that the child's behavioral problems
reflect an unconscious knowledge--often extremely detailed and
accurate--of the supposed secret. The parent can then be shown
how that unconscious knowledge plays a major role in maintaining
the present disastrous situation."
Yet in their chapter on loss in the lives of children, they
say, "The monolithic approach to adoption casework in this country
dictates that the child be told about the adoption as early as
possible." They go on to deride this advice by making a ridiculous
statement, and I quote, "If the need is for knowledge, then it
follows that one should inform the nonadopted child of the fact
that he is 'biological.' Babies have no need to 'know' about adoption."
I find their contradiction extraordinary because it shows how
profound is the denial of the experience suffered by adopted children.
Keeping that secret gives them no context in which to place the
feelings caused by their unconscious or preconscious experience
of that loss. They often feel abnormal, sick or crazy for having
those feelings and puzzled by their own behavior. Bowlby reminded
us, however, that the behavior often reflects a child's response
to loss and is "a legitimate product of bitter experience."
Adoption for these children isn't a concept to be learned, a
theory to be understood or an idea to be developed. It is a real
experience about which they have had and are having recurring
and conflicting feelings, all of which are legitimate. These feelings
are their response to the most devastating experience they are
ever likely to have: the loss of their mother. The fact that the
experience was preverbal does not diminish the impact, it only
makes it more difficult to treat. It is almost impossible to talk
about, and for some even difficult to think about. Many do not
feel as if they were born, but as if they came from outer space
or a file drawer. To allow themselves to think about being born,
even a feeling sense of it, would mean also having to think about
and feel what happened next, and that they most certainly don't
want to do.
It is understandable that adoptees might not want to think about
the painful experience of being separated from their biological
mothers, but what about the clinicians to whom they go for help?
What about us? What happens when adoptees come in for counseling
and their adoption is considered irrelevant to their problems?
The taboo against thinking that there may be a difference between
an adoptive and biological family keep many from even mentioning
that they are adopted. Even if they do, many professionals, after
giving cursory acknowledgment of the initial abandonment, then
ignore this as an integral part of the problems demonstrated by
the adoptee.
Treatment usually focuses on the family dynamics without there
being any true consideration given to the impact which the adoptee's
original trauma might have had on him, his relationship with his
adoptive parents or any subsequent relationships with significant
others. Adoptee, clinician and author, Joanne Small, refers to
these clinicians as "professional enablers" and claims that they
often display co-dependent behavior in the manner in which they
"unwittingly engage in the same kinds of dysfunctional behaviors--avoidance,
protection, covering up and denial--with which adoptive family
members deny their differences" and ignore the early experience
of the child.
Psychologists often talk about the first three years of life
as being very important in the emotional development of children.
Our current understanding of prenatal psychology has made many
realize that the environment in utero is an important part of
a baby's well-being. Yet, when it comes to adoption, there seems
to be a black-out in awareness. There is a kind of denial that
at the moment of birth and the next few days, weeks or months
in the life of a child, when he is separated from his mother and
handed over to strangers, he could be profoundly affected by this
experience. What does it mean that we have for so long ignored
this?
How many of us remember very much about the first three years
of our lives? Does our lack of memory mean that those three years
had no impact on us...our personalities, perceptions and attitudes?
How many sexually abused children remember those experiences?
Are we to believe that if a person can successfully keep those
experiences from consciousness, they will not affect his or her
future relationships? In the case of abuse we certainly recognize
that there is, indeed, a profound lifelong effect on the person,
an effect which often requires years of therapy to overcome. Yet
what if the most abusive thing which can happen to a child is
that he is taken from his mother?
In her book, Necessary Losses, Judith Viorst tells this
story:
A young boy lies in a hospital bed. He is frightened
and in pain. Burns cover 40 percent of his small body. Someone
has doused him with alcohol and then, unimaginably, has set
him on fire. He cries for his mother.
His mother has set him on fire.
It doesn't seem to matter what kind of mother a child has lost,
or how perilous it may be to dwell in her presence. It doesn't
matter whether she hurts or hugs. Separation from mother is
worse than being in her arms when the bombs are exploding. Separation
from mother is sometimes worse than being with her when she
is the bomb.
I am not suggesting that we keep children with mothers who will
set them on fire, but I am suggesting that we have to understand
what it is we are doing when we take him away from her.
It is curious that in the literature there is no differentiation
made between the terms mother and primary caregiver. Often it
is even pointed out by the author that when using the term "mother"
he is actually referring to any mother-figure who acts as the
primary caregiver. In other words, it is implied that the mother
could be replaced by another primary caregiver with the child's
being none the wiser. It is my thesis that this is not true, and
that the severing of the ties with the biological mother and replacing
her with another primary caregiver does not happen without psychological
consequences for both mother and child.
For these babies and their mothers, relinquishment and adoption
are not concepts, they are experiences from which neither fully
recovers. A child can certainly attach to another caregiver, but
rather than a secure, serene feeling of oneness, the attachment
in the adoptive relationship may be that which Bowlby referred
to as anxious attachment. He noted that "provided there is one
particular mother-figure to whom he can relate and who mothers
him lovingly, he will in time take to her and treat her almost
as though she were his mother." That "almost" is the feeling expressed
by some adoptive mothers who feel as if they had accepted the
infant as their child, but whose infant had not quite accepted
them as mother.
There is reason to believe that during gestation a mother becomes
uniquely sensitized to her baby. Donald Winnicott called this
phenomenon "primary maternal preoccupation." He believed that
toward the end of the pregnancy "the mother gradually develops
a state of heightened sensitivity which provides a setting for
the infant's constitution to begin to make itself evident, for
the developmental tendencies to start to unfold and for the infant
to experience spontaneous movement..." He stressed that the mother
alone knows what the baby could be feeling and what he needs,
because everyone else is outside this area of experience.
The mother's hormonal, physiological, constitutional and emotional
preparation provides the child with a security which no one else
can. There is a natural flow from the in-utero experience of the
baby safely contained within the womb to that of the baby secure
within the mother's arms, to the wanderings of the toddler who
is then secure in his proximity to her. This security provides
the child with a sense of rightness and wholeness of self.
The initial post-natal bonding and imprinting experiences are
part of a continuum and according to Jean Liedloff, author of
The Continuum Concept, are hormonally triggered and must
be responded to immediately. She said:
If the imprinting is prevented from taking
place, if the baby is taken away when the mother is keyed to
caress it, to bring it to her breast, into her arms and into
her heart....what happens? It appears that the stimulus to imprint,
if not responded to by the expected meeting with the baby, gives
way to a state of grief.
It appears that this state of grief is felt, not only by the
mother, but also by the baby. There is a natural rhythm and sequence
to events which when interrupted, as in the case of the relinquished
child, leaves him with a sense of something lost, something missed.
The adoptive mother might be at a disadvantage in coping with
the affective behavior of the child, for she doesn't understand
the depth of his grief or the limitations placed upon her as his
mother. She has not been told that her baby has suffered a trauma,
a profound sense of loss, and is in some stage of the grief cycle.
His security has been challenged, his trust impaired and bonding
made more difficult or impossible.
Perhaps this would be a good place to stress the difference
between attachment and bonding as I see it, because these two
terms are also often used interchangeably in the literature. I
believe that it would be safe to say that most adopted children
form attachments to their adoptive mothers. Their survival depends
upon this. Bonding, on the other hand, may not be so easily achieved.
It implies a profound connection which is experienced at all levels
of human awareness. In the earliest stages of an infant's life
this bond instills the child with a sense of well-being and wholeness
necessary to healthy development. The bonding with the biological
mother, which begins in utero, is part of a continuum which, if
interrupted, has a profound effect on the child. It seems that
the loss experienced by the infant is not only the loss of the
mother, but a loss of part of the Self.
Early in the 1970's, Margaret Mahler in the United States and
Erich Neumann in Israel came up with remarkably similar theories
concerning the psychological development of human beings. In essence
their ideas were that physical and psychological birth do not
happen simultaneously. Because human beings are born prematurely
in comparison to other mammals, for several months after physical
birth has taken place the infant remains psychologically merged
with the mother. Though the body of the child is already born,
the Self is not yet separate from that of the mother but is contained
within her psychologically. Mahler called this phase the symbiotic
stage and believed the baby's capacity to be in dual unity with
the mother to be "the primal soil from which all subsequent human
relationships form." Neumann also talked about the dual union
between the infant and mother as being crucial in the forming
of all subsequent relationships when he said, "The mother, in
the primal relationship, not only plays the role of the child's
Self, but actually is that Self....This primal relationship is
the foundation of all subsequent dependencies, relatedness and
relationships."
Florence Clothier postulated that in addition to the normal
demands made upon the ego, the adopted child has also to compensate
for the wound left by the loss of the biological mother. The primitive
relationship with the mother which occurs after physical separation
and which protects and nurtures him in the new and alien world
outside the womb, is denied the adopted child. In fact he has
learned that the environment is hostile, the mother may disappear
and love can be withdrawn.
If the mother cannot be counted on to be the whole environment
for the child, what happens is that he begins to take over for
her. This phenomenon is often referred to as premature ego development.
Rather than a gradual, well-timed developmental process, the child
is forced by this wrenching experience of premature separation
to be a separate being, to form a separate ego before he should
have had to do so. Even though this can have "survival value"
for infants in a world which, because of their abandonment, is
often found hostile, it is not appropriate at this stage of development
and is even considered pathological under age three months by
some clinicians. The compensating factor of survival value brings
with it hypervigilance and anxiety and takes away the serenity
and safety of that primal mother/child relationship. Although
this survival value aspect of premature ego development may no
longer be necessary when the child is placed with the adoptive
parents, he does not perceive this. His experience is that the
protector may at any time disappear. The child becomes hypervigilant,
which means that he constantly tests the environment for clues
to behavior which will keep him from a further abandonment. One
adoptee described this as "walking a narrow ridge in the middle
of the Grand Canyon."
Rather than trusting the permanence of the caregiver, many adoptees
talk about always feeling as if they couldn't count on anyone
and having to be self-sufficient in life. Their feelings about
this go as far back as they can remember....and probably further.
One adoptee, in trying to put words to these feelings, said, "It
was as if I figuratively sat up in my crib and said to myself,
'I can't trust anyone. I will have to take care of myself.'" She
no longer had a sense of well-being and security. She had lost
something which could never be regained.
Another response to anxiety is one which, unsolicited by me
in my original research, nevertheless was mentioned by almost
everyone whom I interviewed. That was psychosomatic symptoms or
chronic illness which began in childhood and often persisted into
adulthood. It seemed as if those children who failed to act out
their anxiety were the ones to most often display some kind of
psychosomatic illness. The chronic somatic disorders reported
to me were stomach aches, migraines or headaches, asthma and allergies,
stuttering or tics and skin disorders.
The most-reported chronic somatic disorder was stomach aches.
This makes sense when one realizes the close association between
gastrointestinal functioning and emotional states. These relationships
have been noticed throughout history and are reflected in the
folk language by expressions such as "not being able to stomach"
something, noting that some situations "make me sick," or being
"fed up" with a situation. All of these responses may be seen
as a result of anxiety, an anxiety which for adoptees may be caused
by the unconscious fear of another abandonment and the deprivation
of food or nurturing.
Rollo May called our attention to the "close association of
gastrointestinal functions with desires for care, support and
a dependent form of love--all of which are related genetically
to being fed by one's mother." He believed that it is necessary
that a distinction be made between anxiety and fear when attempting
to treat a psychosomatic disorder. He stressed that "fear does
not lead to illness if the organism can flee successfully. "If
on the other hand the individual is forced to remain in an unresolved
conflict situation, fear changes to anxiety and psychosomatic
symptoms often accompany this anxiety.
One can respond to danger by either fighting or fleeing. But
if one, like the adoptee, has no conscious memory of the source
of the fear, he may experience that fear as free-floating anxiety
in which gastric activity works overtime. The resulting pain or
illness is different from hypochondria in which the symptoms are
imagined. These illnesses are real, but the cause is emotional
rather than organic.
Greenacre brought the discussion more immediately to the situation
of the adopted child by suggesting a predisposition to anxiety
caused by immediate postnatal trauma. She said that the experiences
of the earliest days of life "leave some individuals with unique
somatic memory traces which amalgamate with later experiences
and may thereby increase later psychological pressures."
The experience of vomiting, diarrhea, headaches, insomnia and
acute depression following the rejection of a birth mother after
a search may qualify as a reawakening of those somatic and emotional
memory traces and a reenactment of the original organic response
to abandonment. In a less acute but perhaps more common example,
one adoptee reported to me that she has gotten "physically and
mentally sick" at three-week separations from her husband. She
attributed this to missing her best friend to talk with, but that
severe a reaction would seem to go deeper than that. Other adoptees
have told me that they often felt sick when separated from their
mothers while at camp or visiting relatives. One man said that
when he went away to college he felt extremely anxious to the
point of illness, and a woman told me that while on her honeymoon
she phoned her mother several times but still felt sick. These
examples illustrate that which might be the reawakening of those
memory traces to which Greenacre referred.
The anxiety produced by the uncertainty of the permanence of
the mother-figure often manifests in two diametric behavior patterns:
provocative, aggressive and impulsive; or withdrawn, compliant
and acquiescent. When there are two children in a family they
almost always assume a polarity in their overt behavioral patterns
no matter what their personality, sex or birth order. The child
who acts out is displaying counterphobic rejecting behavior which
not only tells the parents and makes them feel that which he feels
inside, but repeatedly tests their commitment to him. This is
the child most often found in treatment.
Most treatment centers don't know how to deal with these children
however, because they are not aware of the underlying cause for
their behavior. It rarely occurs to the counselors working with
them that these adopted children are unconsciously reacting to
a devastating experience: that of having been separated from their
first mothers. There is therefore no context by which to judge
their feelings or behavior. Yet many of the responses of these
children are readily understandable and make sense in view of
their experience.
For instance adoptive parents will tell us that their children
often act out on their birthdays. They may begin by having a sense
of excitement, but often end up sabotaging their parties. Yet
is it any wonder that many adoptees sabotage their birthday parties?
Why would one want to celebrate the day they were separated from
their mothers? They of course have probably never really understood
themselves, why they did this. One adoptee said, "I don't know
why I acted the way I did. I know that my mother was really trying...that
she really wanted me to have a good time. But, I don't know, I
just felt so sad and angry all at the same time. I couldn't enjoy
myself. I just wanted to run away and hide."
My daughter has never sabotaged her birthday, which is four
days before Christmas, but on her 20th birthday she told me that
each year the three days between her birthday and the day we brought
her home are repeatedly the three worst days of the year for her.
She feels hopeless, helpless, incredibly lonely and depressed.
She is experiencing an anniversary reaction. For adoptees (and
for the mothers who gave them birth) birthdays commemorate an
experience, not of joy, but one of loss and sorrow.
Other behavioral problems, such as stealing and hoarding, needing
to be in control, lying, etc. are equally understandable when
viewed in the context of adoptee's traumatic beginning of life.
That they no longer serve a useful purpose and in fact make life
considerably more difficult for the adoptee and his parents does
not change the significance of their feelings or the meaning behind
their behavior. The behaviors need to be seen as metaphors for
the past experience of the child. The feelings which produce the
behavior could then be acknowledged and validated and the adoptee
taught less destructive responses to the feelings. In this way
some real healing might be accomplished.
One will notice that a great deal of the time much of the destructive
behavior of the acting-out adoptee is his way of calling attention
to his pain. He feels chaotic inside, so he causes chaos outside.
Many adoptive parents, not understanding what is going on and
having their own feelings of rejection triggered, argue with their
child rather than validating his feelings. This only serves to
reinforce his feeling that no one understands him, which causes
him to have to act out over and over again in order to find some
way to call attention to his pain.
But what about the quiet ones, the ones
who cause no trouble? When one has experienced the wrenching and
premature separation from the mother, one fears the loss of one's
own center. This losing of one's center of Self often results
in the creation of the false
self, an exaggerated persona, which the child believes will
protect him from further rejection and abandonment. The damage
this does to the child's sense of Self is often overlooked because
of the apparent adjustment most children make to the new environment.
In addressing this, Harriet Machtiger said, "Though the psychological
effects of childhood trauma may only become apparent in later
years, the actual damage to the personality has been there since
childhood, even though it may be masked by a superficial adjustment.
This superficial adjustment disallows a true mourning of the
original loss which, as Machtiger said, "coincides with the development
of a false self or a persona wherein feelings are bottled up."
This tendency toward a false self is important to recognize as
a defensive coping mechanism for adoptees and deserves further
investigation because it is often seen as "good adjustment." We
must not be lulled into believing that this child suffers no pain.
Adjustment often means shutting down.
Adult adoptees whom I have seen in treatment, most of whom did
not act out in childhood, speak of having a sense that
the baby they were "died," and that the one that they became was
going to have to be different, to be better, so that he would
not be abandoned again. Many became "people pleasers," constantly
seeking approval. As children they were very polite, cooperative,
charming and generally "good." But locked inside them was pain
and the fear that the unacceptable baby who died would come back
to life if they were not vigilant. They could never truly bond
with anyone because they were not being themselves. They related
an inability to show how they felt about things, especially negative
feelings.
The acquiescent, compliant child is very deceptive. Because
he doesn't cause much trouble, he therefore seems untroubled.
Although he often seems affectionate, it might be important to
notice how willing he is to express other feelings such as anger,
sadness, hostility and disappointment, to ascertain how real the
feelings of affection actually are. Are they truly expressions
of a deep secure love or are they an anxious response to the fear
of a further abandonment? Parents often mistake clinginess for
affection. Children who feel secure in their parents' love can
more easily risk expressing negative feelings as well. A well-adjusted
child or adult can allow himself to experience a whole range of
feelings. Rather than telling a child that he shouldn't feel a
certain way, it is a parent's or therapist's responsibility to
teach him acceptable ways in which to express those feelings.
It is important to understand that the feelings are legitimate
and appropriate. Although knowing the reasons for the birthmother
relinquishing her child may aid an adoptee's intellectual understanding,
it does not cancel out nor mitigate his feelings. As my daughter
said when she finally allowed herself to feel the loss of her
birthmother, "I can understand that she had to give me up, Mom,
but why doesn't that make me feel any better?" I told her that
it was the 14-year-old girl who understood the reasons for her
relinquishment, but the feelings were those of the newborn baby,
who just felt the loss of a mother who never came back. The baby
doesn't care why she did it, the baby just feels abandoned, and
that abandoned baby lives inside each and every adoptee all his
or her life.
The anxiety caused by the distrust of the permanency of the
adoptive relationship manifests in other ways which need to be
understood in order to correctly diagnose and treat adoptees.
Because of their tendency to split and their fear of connecting,
which is often misinterpreted as a fear of engulfment, adoptees
are sometimes labeled as borderline personalities. This is unfortunate
because treatment should be radically different than that for
the true borderline. Abandonment is not an intrapsychic concept
for the adoptee, it is an experience, and working through
his issues of abandonment, loss, trust, splitting, etc., must
be done in a manner appropriate to this experience.
Splitting was first introduced into the literature by Freud
in his "family romance" theory. When a child becomes aware of
rejection by a parent, he has a tendency to imagine that he is
not really the child of this parent but of another who is all-loving
and all-permissive. This fantasy takes on more reality for children
who actually do have two sets of parents. Instead of seeing both
aspects of good and bad in one set of parents, adoptees often
assign one attribute to the adoptive parents and the other to
the biological parents, especially the mother. Sometimes the good
image is given to the adoptive mother and the negative aspect
is for the biological mother who gave them away.
Frequently, however, using the mechanisms of reversal and displacement
(in which feelings one has for one person are projected onto another
more convenient person--like yelling at one's wife when one is
really mad at one's boss) the adoptee projects the negative image
onto the adoptive mother in an effort to work out feelings of
hostility, anger and rejection as a result of having been relinquished.
She is, after all, available while the birthmother is not.
Sometimes the child's perception of the adoptive mother vacillates
between her being seen as the rescuing mother and as the abandoning
mother, with the child's demonstrating ambivalent feelings of
compliance and hostility in his attitude towards her. These feelings,
which are defending the child against vulnerability and possible
annihilation, are confusing to both mother and child and inhibit
his working out his feelings of love and hate, both toward his
parents and towards himself.
If the adoptive mother is insecure about her own sense of being
the child's mother (and I believe that in a certain sense there
is good reason for this feeling of insecurity), a child can exert
a great deal of power over her by using this split to his advantage.
The "mean" adoptive mother is not after all the "real" mother
and the child doesn't have to pay attention to her. The adoptive
mother may give in and allow the child to misbehave in order to
regain his love. Or, feeling rejected herself, she may act in
an angry, rejecting manner towards him, thus setting up a vicious
cycle of rejection, anger, anxiety and capitulation; resulting
in a confusion of inconsistency and acting out.
This scenario is sometimes played out in reverse where the child,
having been told that he is "special," feels that he has to be
perfect in order to retain the love and acceptance of his parents.
This need to be special can put a great deal of pressure on the
child to live up to some perceived expectations which are frequently
unattainable. This often leaves the child feeling inadequate and
worthless, a reinforcement of his feelings of having failed his
first mother. The need to be perfect for the "rescuing" parents
makes the child suppress his own true self in order to submit
to the wishes of his parents. This seems imperative to his survival:
"You have to be good or you're gotten rid of."
The insecurity of his being good enough to keep can be made
even more acute if he is also insecure about the meaning of love.
Many children are told that the reason that their birthmothers
gave them up was because she loved them and wanted to do the right
thing. This sets up a cognitive context for a prevailing feeling:
that if one is loved, one is abandoned. This is a dilemma for
the adoptive parents who want the child to see his birthmother
in a good light, but at the same time don't know how to convey
this without unwittingly setting up the equation of love equals
abandonment. The phrase, "your mother loved you so she gave you
away," is a non sequitur so far as the child is concerned. Mothers
who love their babies do not give them away. Birthmothers grapple
with this feeling too. An inordinate number of these fertile women
never conceive again.
The dilemma for the child is acute because he desperately needs
love and affection, yet this seems dangerous to him. His need
to defend against further devastation causes him to initiate a
distancing response to bonding. Even when describing the relationship
with the mother as positive, there is often a qualification that,
in truth, the relationship was shallow emotionally. A typical
response to the question of intimacy with the mother came from
a woman who felt quite connected to her mother and modeled herself
after her, but said, "I cannot discuss intimate feelings with
her." She described herself as "numbing out" her own feelings
and aligning herself with her mother, becoming what her mother
wanted "a la Alice Miller."
In my own experience with my daughter, I noticed that it was
always easier for her to talk to me late at night when her defenses
were down, or on the telephone. The distance provided by the phone
gave her the security she needed to say what was in her heart.
She could allow intimacy in conversation so long as she didn't
feel threatened by my presence. It is only recently, after years
of therapy and work we have done together, that my daughter can
sit down with me and risk my love.
I had not been told when I adopted my first daughter that she
had suffered a trauma which would impact every aspect of my relationship
with her. And had I been told, as I said earlier, I probably would
not have believed it. Prospective adoptive parents who consult
with me certainly don't want to believe it. It is difficult to
accept something which we can't basically change. And we can't
eliminate the trauma and pain of separation from the first mother.
We can help though by understanding their suffering, acknowledging
feelings and providing ways in which to work through that pain.
Adoption, which has been heralded as the best social solution
to the problem of unwanted pregnancies, is not the panacea which
we would like it to be. The infant's connection to his or her
biological mother seems to be physiological, emotional, mystical,
spiritual and everlasting. To be separated from her causes lifelong
issues of abandonment and loss, rejection, trust, loyalty, shame
and guilt, intimacy, identity and power or mastery and control.
Some children respond to this early loss by acting out in aggressive,
provocative and impulsive ways, while others do so by withdrawing
and acting in a compliant, acquiescent manner. Both are wounded,
but each is responding to the pain and anxiety in a different
way. Each has the same wish for love and acceptance and each has
the same fears of rejection and abandonment. One pushes for the
inevitable and the other guards against it. In neither case is
the child operating from his true Self, but from a false self,
which he (probably unconsciously) believes helps protect him from
further hurt, rejection and disappointment.
The manner in which we respond to these problems will have a
great deal to do with the developmental and emotional health of
the adoptee. The adoptive parents can and do make a tremendous
difference in the lives of their children, but their effectiveness
and that of the clinicians who work with them would be greatly
enhanced by honesty, education, support and understanding.
For children who truly cannot be taken care of by their biological
families, adoption is still the best solution, but it is imperative
that adoptive parents, clinicians and society in general begin
to acknowledge the complexity of that solution. It is important
to recognize that all adoptees by definition have suffered a traumatic
loss at the beginning of their lives and that that experience
has or will impact all their subsequent relationships.
The pain is great, but healing is possible. The road to healing
is a long road, and we must all travel that road together: birthmother,
adoptee and adoptive parents. We cannot change the past; it is
a part of our history forever. To regret it is wasted energy,
just as worrying about (rather than planning for) the future is
wasted energy. Both deplete the strength we need to be in the
here and now, to be truly present for one another...to acknowledge,
understand and empathize with one another's feelings. Let us be
present and let the healing begin.
Considering
adoption? Don't feel you have any other options? We're here to help!
